


Meowing is normal, bro

by candylestrade



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: ADHD Fig, Autistic Fabian, Autistic Riz, Gen, Short one this time!, Stimming, i was feeling weird and lonely and i was like hmm i will write an autistic riz fic, no ships rlly! just friendship moments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-14 15:01:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29544168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candylestrade/pseuds/candylestrade
Summary: Riz has been alone a whole lot of his life, so doesn’t think that stimming around his friends will be well recieved. He’s wrong, obviously.
Relationships: Figueroth Faeth & Riz Gukgak, Riz Gukgak & Fabian Aramais Seacaster
Comments: 5
Kudos: 69





	Meowing is normal, bro

**Author's Note:**

> Heyyy I’ve been depressed as hell for a while and miss stimming with my friends so I wrote this! Autistic Riz is a headcanon very near and dear to my heart so I hope you enjoy this!

Riz is starting to believe that maybe he’s too used to being alone.

Lying on his bed sideways, reading a mystery novel, he can say “Oh, no  _ way,”  _ and laugh to himself quietly at little jokes. He can make quiet noises to himself, like cat meows and even just nonsense words like “Weh”, without anyone making fun of him.

It’s at this realisation that he thinks, “Oh, maybe I’m supposed to be alone.”

His mom hadn’t had the time to take him to get a diagnosis. They both knew he was autistic, but they didn’t have the money or the time to confirm it. Moving around in his room, kicking his legs and making cat yowling noises for fun, Riz decided he probably didn’t need a professional to tell him he was autistic.

Riz loves his friends. Still, being around them feels somehow like he has to put the walls back up. He can get excited about the case and the mysteries, because that’s  _ normal,  _ at least for him. Biting things, apparently, is another thing he allowed to slip through. But he hasn’t had the confidence to make nonsense noises out of nowhere, or shake his arms around. Those stay under the mask, hidden from the world that deems them “freaky” and “weird”. 

It’s at one point, though, that he forgets. He’s in his office, working at his desk, when he starts meowing to himself, and tapping his pencil on the paper stack. 

“Dude, hell yeah.”

Riz jumps, staring across the room as Fig starts meowing too. He’d forgotten, he forgot she was there, and now she’s definitely going to make fun of him. He fucked up. This is bad.

The unexpected strum of the bass guitar vibrates through his hands, which he’d pressed desperately to his ears in an attempt to calm down. A quiet riff echoed through the room, as Fig made soft cat noises along to the tune. 

It took Riz a moment to realise that she was kicking her legs in the air as she sat sideways on the leather couch, the same way he does when he’s alone.

-

Fig seemed like a safety net, now. She would stim in front of the others, verbally and physically, and Riz would see they didn’t make fun of her. Gorgug even joined in. 

So, eventually, Riz started stimming in front of them, too. It startled them, at first, when it would be quiet in the Mordred Manor kitchen and Riz just started slapping the table, but nobody made fun of him. Fig would join in, and so would Gorgug, and eventually everyone would be slapping the table. It didn’t feel like something he needed to hide, anymore. 

Fabian asked him, once, how he had found the courage to do it. Riz was briefly annoyed, thinking Fabian was being an asshole about it, before noticing the boy’s twitchy hands and the broken skin around his nails. Riz gave him one of his tangle fidgets, then, and asked Fabian to show him how to dance.

-

Riz’s room is still his safe place, of course, but it feels less like he’s supposed to stay there forever. He certainly doesn’t feel like he’s supposed to be alone, now.

He mutters quietly to himself when the protagonist of a book is making the wrong assumption, and he kicks around in the air for fun, dancing without a floor. Cat noises are still his favourite to make, but it feels strange not to hear his friends echoing them back to him. 

It’s fine, though. He knows he’ll see them tomorrow.


End file.
